Birds

May 05, 2010 …you’d be mine! Our resident screech owl stared me down this afternoon as I watched it from the deck. We still don’t know whether it’s a male or female, but we’re hoping for the latter, as we’d love to see some fuzzy chicks peeking out soon. It ...

May 04, 2010 One of my favorite Austin garden tours occurs this Saturday, May 8: Gardens on Tour, produced by the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. I’m pleased to offer you a sneak preview of one of the gardens on the tour, the Reynosa Drive garden, which I’m particularly fond ...

April 30, 2010 It’s the perfect time of year for sitting on the upper patio, looking out over the raised beds as a succession of plants burst into bloom. Little details please me, like this bird in my succulent dish. Dianthus ‘Bath’s Pink’ perfumes the garden with a delicious clove-like ...

April 23, 2010 Last week, on her blog Human Flower Project, Julie Ardery wrote a beautiful post about seeing her one-year-old garden spring to life, after years of believing she would never have a garden—and that she was somehow to blame for it. In desperation, she’d hired out the design ...

April 23, 2010 Last week, on her blog Human Flower Project, Julie Ardery wrote a beautiful post about seeing her one-year-old garden spring to life, after years of believing she would never have a garden—and that she was somehow to blame for it. In desperation, she’d hired out the design ...

April 01, 2010 Somebody’s watching me when I work in the garden. Our little screech owl rests in the owl box during the day, but periodically it pokes its head out to give me a sleepy-eyed stare. Reassured that all is well, it looks away and checks out the rest ...

March 23, 2010 Anhingas and flowering bromeliads in the Everglades, Florida On telling friends that we were planning to visit Everglades National Park, my husband and I found that raised eyebrows and wrinkled noses were the most common responses. Why visit a bug-infested swamp, they asked. We have a thing ...

February 24, 2010 Night owl news! The squatter squirrel has departed or been evicted by the new tenant. At last, after a year-long wait, we have a screech owl in our owl box. I noticed her (or him) on Tuesday, as I was out covering tender plants before a predicted ...

February 07, 2010 Tweeet! Shaking his tail feathers and dancing to welcome spring, Pokey Park‘s Midnight Serenade Pose 1 is just one of many nature- and human-themed sculptures on display at the Wildflower Center through March 7 ...

December 28, 2009 Bundled up in coats, scarves, and seldom-worn gloves, we spent several enjoyable hours at the acclaimed Fort Worth Zoo yesterday before driving home to Austin, following a post-Christmas trip to Dallas to visit my DH’s extended family. Among the many birds we saw at the zoo, these ...

November 08, 2009 A monarch and honeybee share space on a Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundiflora) Twelve Austin garden bloggers caravaned to San Antonio on Saturday to visit San Antonio Botanical Garden and the Antique Rose Emporium, with a stop along the way at Madrone Nursery in San Marcos, a native-plant ...

September 04, 2009 Datura metel Late last night, I opened the front door to water a wilted plant on the porch and heard a mysterious rustling. Peering into the shadows I spotted the armadillo that’s been digging under my fence nearly every night to dig up my new plants in ...

June 08, 2009 For my last post about Chicago Spring Fling, I’ll revisit a gem of a garden hidden away in a corner of Lincoln Park, not far from the zoo: Caldwell Lily Pool. A sign gives you the back story. Like entering a cave or a slot canyon, you ...

May 18, 2009 A small field toasted with the orange-red of blanketflower (Gaillardia aristata ) and punctuated by the lemon-yellow flowers and green trunks and leaves of Parkinsonia aculeata , variously known as retama, Jerusalem thorn, and paloverde. This lovely vista greeted us on our way to one of the ...

January 23, 2009 My pictures of the blue adobe courtyard at the Antique Rose Emporium in San Antonio drew several comments from readers who didn’t know about the Alamo City location. While ARE in Brenham/Independence is better known, the Emporium in San Antonio is actually closer to us Austinites. As ...

January 20, 2009 A beautiful, sunny, 70-degree holiday on Monday enticed us to spend the day outdoors, despite our itchy, cedar-fever-irritated eyes. So we packed up the kids and drove south to the San Antonio Zoo, where we fed these lovely Australian lories cupfuls of nectar. Aren’t they beautiful? Their ...